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Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Memorial Day At Almost Heaven South

Memorial day around here usually means grilled burgers at the dock and this year was no different. We invited a few friends over and had potato salad and baked beans along with the burgers.

Bev made the tater salad using her standard ingredients of waxy potatoes, hard boiled eggs, onion, celery, mayo, mustard, celery salt, and S&P. This is pretty much the way Mom made it and it’s still my preferred recipe and I like it served at room temperature. I don’t think she ever measures anything, but just adds and samples until it tastes about right – and it’s always delicious. The final test is my taste test and I noticed she slipped some sliced green olives in on me – it still passed with flying colors. My next horizon expansion may be trying other recipes to see if there could possibly be one in the world I like as well.

For the beans, I used a recipe from the web and pretty well followed the recipe as written, except I used the grill to bake them – no oven at the dock. To make an oven out of the grill I put the two of outside burners as low as possible, put a piece of foil on the grate (to keep the pan clean), set in a jelly roll pan with a rack on top of it and put the pot of beans on top of the rack. So I thought the pan would get very little indirect heat and the grill gauge registered at about 300*. Here’s the set up and it worked great like this.

I must have got a little too much liquid in them as they never did thicken, but they were still tasty.

For the burgers, I used 6 oz of ground chuck per patty (4 oz for Alex and her friends) and made them big enough to completely cover the bun. Although they make for a pretty picture and are always made this way on TV, I don’t like a real thick burger that is difficult to eat, especially after adding the toppings. I also made the center thinner so they’d be about the same thickness after cooking. For all, I seasoned with our standard, Tiger Seasoning, S&P and topped all but Alex's with a slice of Cabot cheddar.

Before dinner, we adults visited for a few hours and Alex and her two friends played in the lake and got pulled on the towable inner tube.

It wasn't fancy and I didn't get a great photo, but everything on my plate went down real easy and was topped off by brownies and a coconut cream pie brought by two of our guests.

After dinner, the adults and dogs (they love to go) all loaded on the pontoon boat, put Alex and her two friends on the inner tube, and set off on a early evening cruise around the lake. We had rain in the morning, but the weather was perfect for our cookout – warm but not hot with a nice little breeze. I got busy enjoying myself and forgot to take pictures of the ride.